


No Lullaby

by variableIntroversion



Series: After The End Of The World [8]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Depression, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Oh Boy these are happy tags, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Self-Loathing, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, This is more of a setup for pale Hal/DS than the full dealie, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, mentions of past character death, sadstuck in the first couple chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 13:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21411226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/variableIntroversion/pseuds/variableIntroversion
Summary: You can't say you were too thrilled when you woke up in the new world. You, who should be dead at least three times over by now. Who might still be technically slated for death but somehow wound up waaayy at the bottom of the list. The Grim Reaper might just be taking his sweet time, maybe taking a coffee break, maybe getting in some paid vacation, before it's your turn. You wouldn't mind if he hurried up, frankly.
Relationships: Auto-Responder | Lil Hal & Davesprite, Davesprite ♦ Lil Hal
Series: After The End Of The World [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1528694
Comments: 2
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so I'm not kidding about those tags regarding suicidal thoughts and depression. Please read at your own discretion and be safe.

You can't say you were too thrilled when you woke up in the new world. You, who should be dead at least three times over by now. Who might still be technically slated for death but somehow wound up waaayy at the bottom of the list. The Grim Reaper might just be taking his sweet time, maybe taking a coffee break, maybe getting in some paid vacation, before it's your turn. You wouldn't mind if he hurried up, frankly.

If that sounds like a depressing thought, that's because it is. Living with the constant expectation of somehow being killed at any moment is depressing. Doubly so when you're confident no one would care if-when it happened. Granted, that last one is partially your fault since you made like a banana and split the moment you realized what happened. Barely a minute after coming to, when everyone else was so distracted and bewildered that nobody seemed to notice you slipping away.

You wonder if any of them even know you're still alive. It's probably for the best that they don't, since you're still confident that p space is going to cosmically smite you any day now. You're fairly sure that none of the victors know, because nobody texted you before or after all of them seemed to vanish off the face of the earth.

When you heard about that, you tried to brush it off. The players were probably just a bit overwhelmed and retreated off to some quiet place to rest up and hang out. Even if you're not really sure where to.

But then the consorts and Carapacians keep bringing it up, almost a month later, and you get one of Those feelings. The empty pit of isolation in your stomach that felt sickeningly familiar to those four months (but it was so much more than four months for you, wasn't it, oh Knight of Time?) you spent in that doomed timeline. It's enough to make you finally open Pesterchum to look for answers, but when you do? Every single person on your list is offline. That horrible sense of déjà vu gets stronger and you, you forego any dignity as the panic hits you.

With all the desperation of a baby bird crying for its mother, you open a window to Dave and shoot him a text. All you get back is an error message informing you that your message wasn't delivered. You try again, then a third time with hopeless desperation. The result is the same when you try Rose, then Jade, then John. You give up after that, feeling dizzy and hysterical and completely, utterly alone.

What happened to them? Or was it you? Did something happen to you and you just don't know it? Is this some sick kind of doomed timeline that you somehow stumbled into; that you're just destined to live in without anyone else?

For the first time in three years, you come dangerously close to tears as you wander aimlessly around Can Town, now a displaced specter with nowhere to go. You barely notice the Carapacians that stop to stare, don't pay any attention to the consorts that nak and blub and babble inches below your tail. It feels like your head's been dunked underwater and you can somehow still breathe, but not enough to make it painless.

You're alone, more completely than you've ever been before. You're alone, and definitely doomed, and you don't even know how.

You just know, with a chilling certainty, that you're going to die, and you realize that you don't really want to as much as you thought you did. Not like this, at least. Not utterly isolated and confused. Maybe not at all, if only living held the promise of just a little more happiness for you. Hell, you'd take mediocrity at this point.

Just not this.

You can't deal with this.

You really, really don't want to deal with this.

You don't even have a pendant to retreat into anymore. You lost yours ages ago, so you can't just retreat into a perfect void.

But you can still get close to it.

Maybe somebody's living in the dinky little house you wander into, maybe not. It doesn't really matter, in the end, because all you do is curl into a neat ball in one corner. You coil your tail, tuck in your wings (yes, wings, because for some reason the game treated you to full-body repairs just in time for your inevitable demise), get yourself comfortable, and then? Then you just sleep.

Sprites don't need to sleep, exactly, and it's more like half-awake dozing for the most part. But that last year on the battleship, you figured out that you could go into something deeper. A hibernation mode, or something along those lines. Blissful, deep emptiness where you don't have to think or feel anything. You can just sleep.

So you sleep, right there in some random little house in a doomed new world, and you hope that when you die, you die before you wake up.


	2. Chapter 2

You don't really dream at all, throughout your super-sized depression nap. The dream bubbles are beyond you at this point, not that you had much access to them before, and your own subconscious sort of goes into silent-static mode when you hibernate. So it's surprisingly, thankfully peaceful.

Every now and again, you'll drift into semi-wakefulness. Nothing like full consciousness, just that dim haze that passes for normal sprite sleep. You drift in your own mind, all but detached from your body, in those moments. Just vaguely, you can sense that you're lying on something soft in someplace warm. Nothing like the cool, hard wooden floors that you just vaguely remember settling on. Someone or something has moved you, but you can't really bring yourself to care. Either they helped you, or they've killed you.

As far as post-deaths go, this isn't so bad, you think.

So you sleep, deep and sound, and occasionally you rise to just below the surface of full consciousness to take stock of the world. Or really, just take note of the time that's passed and how your body is feeling. The latter is still comfortable, still warm, still painless. Alive and safe or dead and safe, whichever, you don't really care. The former? Well, it's been a while.

It's a been a lot of whiles, actually.

The first time you came nearly out of it, seven months had passed. Your sense of time is just as sharp as before you became a sprite, back when you were a proper Knight, so you don't doubt your internal clock on that. Or the next time, when you realize nearly a year has passed since your last check. The next is just over a year since the last, and then you stop caring for a while. A long while.

You only note that a decade's gone by with the barest hint of interest before you metaphorically turn over and get right back to your blissful ignorance.

When a century goes by, you wonder vaguely how much the world has changed, and then brush the thought away like a speck of dust on your desk.

Three centuries, and you barely notice or care.

Five, and you decide to stop keeping track for a while.

When nearly two thousand years go by and you realize it, it's almost enough to startle you awake. Such a large passage of time feels significant, daunting, almost terrifying. For a moment, you are very suddenly in your body again, able to feel every inch, hear the faint hiss-pop of fire, smell hints of smoke and herbs and other things that you can't identify, but don't seem that unpleasant. You can feel the softness of pillows and blankets around you, under you, over you, like a nest. That helps to calm the immediate panic of feeling again.

You are awake, briefly. You can tell that you are indeed alive, somewhere that definitely wasn't that cold little corner you started in. Alive and safe, it seems, for whatever reason.

You take a slow, deep breath, then let yourself drift back into sleep.

For a couple centuries, you keep better track. Every other decade or so, you drift close to wakefulness again, just to check, paranoid of losing more time.

Nearly eight hundred years after you woke up, you realize again that you don't particularly care how long it's been. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to matter.

You stop keeping track.

You're hazily aware of the third millennium passing, and by the fourth, you don't even care. You've settled comfortably into your routine of blank-minded slumber and rare, vague moments of cognition every now and again. The start of the fifth millennium feels like nothing, and you're entirely ready to continue sleeping your nonexistent life away.

What a shock it is, nearly three years after your last reality check, that something external begins to bring you back out of your deep sleep. You can barely even understand what's happening at first, mentally flailing in some clumsy attempt at grasping what you're feeling. You haven't felt a single person touch you in five thousand years. So you think it's understandable that you have trouble recognizing the sensation of fingers in your hair.

When you do, it feels like the breath is knocked out of you, despite the fact that you technically don't need to breathe. It's startling, first and foremost, because somebody is _touching you_, and your eyes are still shut because. Well because of reasons, okay, you're just not quite ready to open them yet. But someone is touching you, which would be enough to make you freak out under normal circumstances. It's sort of freaking you out now, frankly, except it's just so fucking gentle that you don't completely lose your shit.

It. Okay, it's weird but it actually kind of maybe feels a little bit nice. Five-thousand year sleep aside, it's been a really long time since someone's touched you like this. Soft and careful as if they care, as if you matter.

You take a deep breath that might be a little shaky, and open your eyes.

The first thing you note, ludicrously enough, is that your shades are still on. The next is enough to make your feathers puff up in alarm, because the pair of shades pointed at you are gut-wrenchingly familiar, but the person they're on is completely foreign to you. He looks just vaguely like Bro, except a decade younger and sporting stark white hair, too-pale skin, and visible red circuitry under one eye.

You're so caught up trying to place him that you don't realize that his hand's stopped moving, or that he's definitely noticed you're awake, until he speaks.

"The Sleeping Beauty wakes. Welcome back to fully functional cognition, bro."

It finally clicks, hearing the slight robotic tint to his voice.

"Arquius? Or- fuck, what- uh-"

"Hal will suffice, now that I'm separate from my deplorably organic half." 'Hal' answers airily. Oh. Yeah. You guess he is. He sure is, in fact, no longer merged with a sweaty troll with relationship baggage.

"That's so on the nose, it may as well be a second pair of shades." You say. He laughs in that very distinct "air rushing out of the nose" Bro way, which you guess is also the Dirk way, and by extension the Hal way? Whatever way, he laughs, and he has this smile that sort of reminds you of Rose, but somehow non-maliciously catty.

"It's ironic. But would I be right in assuming that you don't go by Davepeta these days?"

"Fuck no, that hatchet can stay buried right where it is, ass-backwards upside down in p space somewhere." The last thing you want to think about right now is how embarrassing your stint as a sprite squared was. What foggy memories you can dredge up of it aren't ones you'd like to relive.

"That's something we can both agree on. So?"

So...? Oh right, name.

"Davesprite is fine, I guess. Why break tradition, right, and I'm assuming the real Dave is around here somewhere so that username's taken. I guess I could take ex-ex Dave ex-ex for the ironies but- Uh. Yeah, Davesprite's fine."

"You could always pick Dave Prime in a power move to usurp your doubles." Hal suggests, sounding far too playful for a guy with such a sharp edge to his smirk. Maybe you'd be a bit more amused, if not for one tiny little detail you picked up on in that sentence.

"Doubles as in plural. How many Daves are running around right now?"

"Three, to my extensive knowledge. The Dave that ascended to god tier, you, and Dirk's bro."

It's right about then that you're hit with several realizations at once. Everyone really is here and alive. Which means this isn't a doomed timeline after all, you just had..._something_ go wrong and somehow waited it out. But not only are the other players alive, but so is Dirk's bro. His guardian, right? Which would probably mean that the other guardians are alive. Bro might be alive. He could be alive right now, and you suddenly feel dizzy and sick again and you kind of wish you could go back to sleep.

"You alright, bromine?" You don't startle at Hal's voice. You do, however, reflexively draw away when you feel his hand on your shoulder. He thankfully retracts it, but you're still sitting a little farther from him than before. When did you sit up? And does it even fucking matter?

"Sure, just-" You really feel sick. You wonder if sprites can throw up, then decide quickly that you don't want to find out. "Is Bro alive?" You aren't sure which answer you want to hear the most. You don't know if you even want to know. But you do, at the heart of it, don't you? You want a yes, maybe even _need_ a yes. You very, very badly need it to be a yes."

"Yes, he is. All of the human guardians revived shortly before the players entered their new universe." Hal's voice sounds gentle, and that makes it sound strange. You think, maybe, he isn't used to making it like that. Or maybe you just half-mindedly process as much, because you're really more occupied with the things he just said.

Bro is alive. There are a lot of conflicting emotions that come with that, but the dominant one is relief. He's alive and that's more than what you ever hoped for. But he's alive and probably with the other Dave, the alpha Dave, Dave actually Prime, the 'Real Dave'. He probably wouldn't really care to see you, you'd just be a nuisance shoehorning your way into his and Dave's lives. And even if you weren't. Even if you weren't, what would you even do if you saw him again?

That's too overwhelming to deal with right this moment, so instead you try and focus on the one other thing that has your attention.

"The jump."

Hal actually seems a little taken off guard by your not-question. His head tips and he straightens his posture, as if you asked something surprising. You watch the way his eyebrows bunch up in what might be consternation.

"Were you not aware of it?" He sounds confused, tentative, as if he's asking something and expecting the answer to be a 'just kidding'.

Instead, you just frown back and fail to keep some impatience out of your voice.

"Aware of what?"

You don't know what to do with a version of Bro who seems genuinely fucking gobsmacked. It's weird to see blatant surprise on his face, almost unsettling.

"Answer me this first; what have your experiences been on Earth C up to this point?"

You can't even focus on how stupid of a name that is, because you're too busy feeling defensive and confused. What does it matter? Why does he even need to know that? Why should you tell him, anyways, and how much should you if you even do?

...Of course, though, you want answers, so you know you're going to.

"Woke up five thousand years ago, went for a walk. then everyone vanished off the face of the planet and I took the longest power nap in history." It's a crude, vague summary. Which is exactly what you intended, because you sure as hell don't want to tell this version of Bro you barely know that you were hoping to just die in your sleep or doze for eternity. He looks shocked enough as it is.

"You've been here for the past five millennia?"

"Yeah, no shit. Where have you been?"

You don't know how to read the expression on Hal's face, but from how soft his voice gets, you think it might be pity.

"Davesprite, we jumped ahead five thousand years shortly after winning. To let civilization develop into something that all of us would be more comfortable living in." He says it gently, but those words hit you like a ton of bricks.

They jumped ahead. Dave used his powers and just zapped everyone ahead in the timeline. You weren't doomed, you were just abandoned.

At least, that's your first instinct, but that's not really right, is it? You left them first, and that bit you in your nonexistent ass. Hard. They probably didn't even realize they were leaving you behind. You did this to your own damn self.

"Davesprite? Progress update on that thought process of yours, homie?" Hal is leaning forwards slightly, as if he wants to get closer to you, and you absolutely don't want that right now. You actually don't want anyone near you at all right now, because this whole thing is really fucking overwhelming.

You wish you could go back to sleep.

You don't want to think about this. You aren't sure if you even can handle thinking about this. How does _anyone_ deal with something like this?

When you feel Hal's hand land on top of yours, you do startle. Your whole body jumps and your feathers puff up with alarm, but he doesn't let go this time. Even when you reflexively try to jerk your hand away, he keeps a hold on it.

"Hey. Yo, DS, eyes over here." You obey him, because what else do you do at this point, and find him watching you intently. "It seems you're having a panic attack. I'm going to need you to take a few deep breaths."

"Sprites don't need to breathe, dunkass." You still sound short of breath, despite this, and that disarms practically all of the venom in your voice. Hal gives you a little smile that looks almost condescendingly knowing. He doesn't let go of your hand.

"But they can, and breathing exercises are a proven method to help relax. Taking a deep breath activates neurons in your brain that tell it it's time to calm the hell down. It's true for other kinds of breathing as well. Laughter, sobbing, gasps, panting, and so on. Your respiratory system is a two-way street of cause and effect when it comes to emotions, interestingly enough."

Interesting is one word for it. Distracting is what you'd call it, listening to him drone about the hows and whys of the long, slow breaths you keep forcing yourself to drag in and out. Inhale for seven seconds, exhale for nine, repeat, listen to Hal. You throw out a few acknowledging sounds and mandatory one-word prompts to keep him prattling on about biological functions, and he's either oblivious or observant enough to keep talking.

You aren't exactly alright still, knowing what you do about the world, but your attention is split enough that gradually, that chest-clenching panic does start to lessen. You put less effort into forcing yourself to listen to Hal, and after a few minutes it just becomes natural. He's rambling on about textile relaxers, you're breathing easier, and the feeling of his thumb brushing against the back of your hand has shifted into something soothing.

The world is big and intimidating and still not quite yours, but you think you might be able to handle it now. So long as you don't think about everything at once and focus on baby steps, maybe you can do this. You can make this motherfucking happen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eyy, it's the exposition/"not everything sucks" chapter!

Hal doesn't tell any of the others that you're around, on your request. He tried a little to talk you out of it, but you put your metaphorical foot down and insisted. It wasn't that big of a struggle to make him agree, lucky you. You just. Aren't ready for anyone else to know you're alive. You've got enough on your plate without all of that bullshit to deal with.

The first step was the easiest, thankfully. You left your sleeping place, which turned out to be some kind of small temple on the outskirts of Can Town. Apparently it was set up shortly after you went into hibernation, and you became part of local folklore or something. You sure gave a few of the residents a shock, floating out into the open like some kind of ghost. It was a bit more hubbub than you would have liked, but at least it wasn't hard to get yourself a house.

The town's expanded a lot since you last saw it. It's more modern, larger, more crowded. But the outskirts are still quiet. Enough so that you don't get overwhelmed, which is pretty much Davesprite's public enemy number one. It's way too easy to get overwhelmed.

To be fair, you've had next to no sensory input for the past five thousand years. You were bound to get a little overloaded when you were suddenly exposed to daylight and groups of talking people and the smell of Everything. Nobody could blame you for holing up in your new home for a few days as you try to readjust.

Hal keeps you company for the time being. Not in person so much as over Pesterchum. You get yourself a new handle right away, before anyone can notice you're around, and he's the only other person who knows it. Which is absolutely fine by you. There's something soothing about knowing that when you get a text, there is exactly one person that it could be.

Maybe you'd be singing a different tune if you didn't like him that much, but lucky you, you do. Your conversations with Hal are often a daily event, sometimes even more than once, and they're maybe possibly something you look forward to. A lot. It almost feels the same as before the game, back when you were first developing online friendships and had begun really looking forward to opening up Pesterchum after school every day.

Your outings into the world are tentative and brief, when you start them. Mostly it consists of wandering your neighborhood for five or ten minutes, until you start feeling paranoid about people staring or you get close to a sensory overload, whichever comes first. Then you retreat quickly back into your house and swear off the outdoors for another day.

Hal tends to ask for progress reports on your 'integration back into society', as he puts it. You wouldn't exactly peg him as the encouraging sort of guy, because like any Strider, he tends to avoid sincerity like the plague and dresses it up with metaphors and sarcasm. There's always a dry joke to be made or some smart comment about this that or the other when you mention managing to stay out for longer, or bring up something that briefly catches your interest while you're on your 'walks'. Praise disguised and twisted into something almost unrecognizable.

Honestly, you prefer it that way. It never feels like you're getting a pat on the head for managing such small, basic things. Maybe that'd be chill with somebody else, but for you, it would just feel condescending. You'll take the dry but playful congratulations on managing to go a whole extra block, and the jokes that at this rate, you'll almost make it to the other side of the town by the turn of the century. The simultaneously self-deprecating and oddly positive back and forth that feels familiar, but not enough to ache.

It's comfortable. You're comfortable like this, living day to day without anything to worry about except for the occasional foray into public. The locals seem to adjust to you, stop with their staring, just go about their business when you float by. You're no longer the awoken specter from the temple, but just another resident in the quaint little suburbs. An oddity made normal through consistency in their lives.

You're comfortable with your life, and comfortable with Hal, you're realizing, the more you talk to him. You think he's comfortable with you, too, because he gradually starts to text you more often. Starts to confide in you, very occasionally, when he needs to vent and just can't seem to keep it to himself.

He's sharp then, caustic and bitter and sarcastic in a mean way that could flay the skin from someone's bones, if words had that much power. It makes you keenly aware of how gentle during your conversations he is in comparison. It also makes you realize that the two of you are a whole lot more alike than you thought. His spiteful passive aggression and frustrations over being shuffled aside as the 'lesser Dirk'. Not real. Not as important. The secondary. You're two sides of the same universal coin, so familiar that you wonder if your existence influenced the results of the Scratch by just a little.

You can't make his issues go away, but you can commiserate. You get where he's coming from better than anyone, and that seems to make him open up more. Funny, how just a little empathy can make somebody trust you. Of course, it works in reverse, too. Even if you tend to avoid talking about your emotions like the plague, he has a way of just sort of...getting you on the topic and hitting your rant button. You swear with this guy you could be talking about fruit one second and how shitty it felt to be brushed off by Egbert the next. Just as a random example.

And fuck, you appreciate how he doesn't make a big deal about it whenever you slip and spill your guts a little. As much as he sometimes reminds you of Rose, he doesn't try to psychoanalyze you or pick your psyche apart. What you usually get is a summary to be sure he's on the same page (which doubles as a prompt in case you're not done, you've realized), a bit of empathy back, and a joke to help shift the subject and mood. You are still Striders, after all. You can't stew in emotional vulnerability too long without wanting to crawl out of your skins. Not that either of you have skin, but that's not really the point.

The point is you trust him, and you're pretty sure that he trusts you, and that feels nice. It feels really nice, having somebody who gets you. Somebody who you're for once confident doesn't secretly wish you were some other Dave.

Life is nice, for once, and even if yours is (maybe?) on the chopping block, even if some days still kind of suck and aren't that easy, you think you'll try to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.


End file.
